The most delicate organ in the [American] body is the pocketbook.

— Mark Twain

Fists of a million plus undead

Corpses pale completely bled

Ghostly fingers at our door

Rapping, tapping… evermore

Iraqi bodies heaped so high

Palestinian dead in good supply

Shot or tortured, bombed or hung

Droned to death, sniped while young

Afghans J-DAM’d at a wedding

Somalis blasted as if shredding

The Lebanese? They’re cluster-bombed

White Man’s death comes with aplomb

His high tech tools efficiently

Murder extra-judicially

No need for trial by your peers

The Magna Carta disappear’d

Black and brown, the starved and poor

Consigned to death, the Western cure

For non-Judeo-Christians all

Dare they resist, dare they not crawl

But hark!

Cold legions with insistent knock

The payment’s due, our fear they mock

What do they want? What have we wrought?

Dead hands outstretched, they can’t be stopped

They’ve risen from the Stygian deep

Icy from uneasy sleep

To meet, confer and set their price

They’ll now assign our cost precise

“Take now their souls!” Up goes the cry

“We’ll suck them out and leave them dry

The dearest jewel of humankind

Empty husks with death entwined”

But comes a young girl’s voice like thunder

Bloodied brow, limbs torn asunder

Rising from Jenin’s high rubble

“Forget their souls, let’s cause real trouble!

“Long has the White Man left behind

Care for his soul, it’s been consigned

To ninth or tenth place of concern

Their love of money is what burns

“Into their hearts, into their brains

Money masks their psychic pain

In comfort, excess, life of ease

Their goal’s to do just as they please

“‘Freedom of choice!’ Their battle cry

Toothpaste, cars or weaponry

(But when they did send Death to call

No choice had we, so we did fall)”

Thus sayeth our Jenin miss

“Let’s skip the dread dementor kiss

Instead we’ll take what they love most

T’is property of which they boast

“Not kindness, love or character

To gold, to things they do defer

Their bloody sacred ‘way of life’

We’ll strip it down, loose on them strife

“Their mortgages and IRAs

Pensions, shares, do not delay

Demolish all of them forthwith

De-capitalize and make it swift

“As recompense for all we’ve born

It seemeth paltry, a mere thorn

Stuck in their bloated, moneyed flesh

They’ll writhe a bit, flail and thrash

“But financial chaos is much more

It heralds what can’t be ignored

Their empire’s dying by degrees

The time has come, we won’t appease!”

The bill’s now due to those who’ve gone

On before us, they’ve been blown

Away by us, they had no choice

In our distress they now find voice

Exposed are we, fault lines laid bare

Our house of cards? Beyond repair

Humbled, cheated we must bow

Recompense forced duty now

It is but little, it is but late

Greed supreme has cast our fate

Drugged by siren song of wealth

We all wreaked mayhem, blood and death

Moreover…

To those amongst us those who assumed

Progressive mantles, we presumed

‘Cause we protested, whispered “no”

We did our part, our quid pro quo

A special place in this new hell

Reserved for those who did “rebel”

In sheep-like demos with non-violence

Producing only deep dark silence

Our silence was so deafening

We could not change a single thing

Childish protests tightly muffled

In cowardice we bowed, we shuffled

In the end our principles

Were worthless really, utter bull

Wealth purchased our true loyalty

And here we are still on our knees

And finally…

The blowback is a-blowing back

It’s creeping inward on a track

To devour its own with rank abandon

No mercy – none – and it’s begun

For those who sent forth Death abounding

Made Death – like interest – compounding

Have turned their gaze to a fresh view

And now they’re coming after you

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J.A. Miller is a grandmother activist from the Middle West who spent many years traveling and studying in the Middle East. She has published essays on Counterpunch and DissidentVoice as well as poems in the manner of the Burma Shave highway signs of her youth at www.PoeticInjustice.net, some of which will be included in their upcoming anthology, Poets for Palestine. Miller is currently writing a book on the Protestant origin of the Zionist project. She can be reached at jsec_miller@hotmail.com

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